


archaic kinds of fun

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Category: A Knight's Tale (2001), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/F, Jousting, M/M, Medievalia But Hold the Bigotry, Nile Freeman-centric, Non-Immortality AU, Unbetaed Unbent Unbroken, intentional anachronisms, wlw-mlm solidarity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:46:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27531721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: So consumed was Nile with imagining the sun glinting on clean new steel, that her ear missed the sound of trudging from behind her. Quite suddenly, they were outstripped, and the bright horizon now included a head of curling black hair above a pair of bare brown shoulders, peeling from sunburn.“Morning,” said a cheerful voice. A naked man patted the neck of Andy’s horse, and soldiered on.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman, Background Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman/Celeste
Comments: 37
Kudos: 155





	archaic kinds of fun

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, if I had a nickel for every time I've written a fusion between _The Old Guard_ and a Paul Bettany movie set in the second half of the fourteenth century, I would now have two nickels. Which isn't very much, but it's weird that it's happened twice. 
> 
> You don't *have* to have watched _A Knight's Tale_ to enjoy this fic (I hope), but I always recommend people watch _A Knight's Tale_ anyway, because it's a good time. Otherwise all you need to know is that nobody's immortal in this one. 
> 
> The M rating is just to be on the safe side. Content warning for breaking bones right at the beginning. 
> 
> The fic title is from Lorde's "Glory and Gore".

Flanders, 1370 A.D. 

A crack like thunder ended the tournament season for Sir Angharad de Skenfrith, and possibly her career. In the second pass of the final match, her opponent’s lance slipped just _so_ past the edge of her shield and found the space beneath her pauldron. What ought to have been a glancing blow became a pitched battle between bone and pine wood. 

Both lost. The lance shattered louder, but even from the starting position at the end of the lists, Nile Freman heard Andy’s groan. 

Sir Angharad had never been unhorsed, and she stayed on Enfys’s back this day despite her agonies. Her own lance broke square on the other knight’s helmet: two points. 

As the horses slowed, Nile sprinted with Nicolò to Sir Angharad’s side. She slanted in the saddle and Nile saw plainly that if the shield wasn’t strapped to her arm, she would have dropped it from her nerveless hand. Nile and Nico had been well schooled to work in tandem without superfluous talk. They both reached to ease Andy down from the saddle. 

Sir Angharad shoved their hands away. “Get me out of the lists,” she ordered. 

Her word was law, so Nico ran to beg five minutes’ surcease from the king-of-arms. Nile led Andy’s bay charger as she had done for twelve years, off the field, away from the grandstands, and down the bank of a stream. She dared not risk a trot. From inside Andy’s helmet came little bitten-off grunts with every roll of the horse’s haunches. 

Nile unbuckled the shield the moment they were out of sight. She moved to Andy’s right and braced her weight as she dismounted with none of her usual grace. “I’m fine,” she insisted when Nile pulled her helmet off. “It just hurts.” 

“Your arm is broken,” Nile said flatly. “Five florins says they could see that from the stands.”

They didn’t have five florins between them to wager. Nile’s belly was empty and had been for three days. The beginning of tournament season ever was a lean time, before renown and prizes grew alike. 

Which made her all the more unreceptive to Andy’s stubborn glare. 

“It’s three to one after the second lance,” Nico panted as he joined them, red-faced from running. “All you have to do is stay ahorse and we’ve won.” 

Nile gave him a warning look. 

Nico peered at her, then Andy, who would not meet his eyes. He bent down to implore her, “Andy. You can ride?” 

Andy shut her eyes. The wind went out of Nicolò. “Then we forfeit,” he sighed. 

A very stupid idea gripped Nile by the throat. “No, we don’t. I’m riding in your place.” 

Andy’s eyes snapped open immediately and fixed on her. “You don’t know how to joust.” 

“I’ve jousted against you.” 

“In the practice lists, as my target. You never struck me.”

“So I know how to take a hit.” Nile yanked off her houppelande. “It’s like Nico said. All I need to do is not fall off Enfys.” 

“You have to be of noble birth to compete,” Nico said gravely. 

As if she could ever forget. “A detail. The landscape is food.” And food was the highway to Nico’s heart, so he went silent and thoughtful, hands on his hips. 

Andy said, “If the marshals realize you’re not me, there’ll be the devil to pay.” 

He would take his due from all their flesh in the end. “Andy,” Nile said, letting her exasperation show, “take off the damn armor.” 

For a long moment, Andy held her gaze. Then she sighed, and nodded Nico over to help her out of her harness. 

Ensconced anonymously in Sir Angharad’s helmet, gambeson, and plate, Nile found her world narrowed to the slits in her visor. Lifting her head one way she saw only the banners above the Duke’s box in the stands. Turning it earthward, the three white scoring flags that represented Andy’s points in the first two passes. In between, a feverishly stomping crowd. At the far end of the lists, the knight with the lion crest who shattered Andy’s arm. Before her, Enfys with his ears turned forward, too veteran to shy at the noise. To her right, the back of Nico’s head as he led her in. 

“Stay on the horse,” he said. “He needs three points to beat you. A broken lance will not win it for him.” 

“I know how to score,” Nile chided--but he was saying it for his own benefit as much as hers. He would do this in her stead if he could fit into Andy’s armor. 

“God love you, Nile,” Nico said. 

“We’ll find out soon enough if He does.” 

They were in new, uncertain territory. Commoners forged and frauded their way into tourneys regularly, suffering the stocks or worse when they were found out. So far, though, Nile had never heard of anyone doing this under the name, and with the consent, of a living knight. 

If she did not comport herself properly here, it would soil Andy’s reputation as well. 

“The score stands at three lances to one in favor of Sir Angharad de Skenfrith, Lord March, Scythe of Poitiers,” announced the king-of-arms. “Lord Philip of Aragon, first son of Prince Philip of Aragon, stand ye ready?”

The lion knight nodded and shut his visor. Nile had no standing feud with Lord Philip of Aragon, but she allowed herself a flare of maleficence, tightening her grip on the reins and the lance. For Andy’s sake she would unhorse him. 

She raised her lance when the king-of-arms called on her. Ready. More than ready--she was saddled in a moment for which she waited her whole life. 

A page came to the midpoint of the barrier, lowered the starting flag, and raised it with a flourish. Enfys knew that signal; before Nile could spur him, he reared out of Nico’s grasp and launched straight into a gallop. Nile fought the weight of her lance all the way down until it couched into the cradle on her right side. A shaky, weak levée that Andy would criticize, but Andy could hardly do better at lowering lances now. 

When she looked up, the three-point iron coronal of Lord Philip’s lance hung directly before her visor. It seemed it had its own vengeance to enact, and didn’t recognize that she was not the same woman who rang Lord Philip’s bell in the last course. 

Things went dark after that. 

But when Nile had her senses back, she was still ahorse. The steel cantle at the rear of the saddle had done most of the work, digging into the small of Nile’s back and keeping her in place. 

“Nile?” Nico said softly, smacking her arm. “Hey?” 

Nile stirred, heard Nico say, “She’s alive,” to the page to divert him away. “You won,” Nico told her, a giddy tremor in his normally steady voice. 

“Ow,” Nile groaned. 

He helped her down from the horse, then guided her across the lists. Oh damn, oh hell. Nile had forgotten the presentation. She thought she’d have time to duck away and switch places with Andy again. 

“Did I hit him?” she said to Nico. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he muttered. 

“Sir Angharad,” said the Duke, and Nile swiveled her head to follow his voice. 

Closer and at her left, the king-of-arms ordered her to remove her helmet. “Uh,” Nile stammered, “my lord. I’m afraid the final blow of the lance has bent it onto my head.” 

Nico’s fingertips appeared under the visor, and he made a show of trying to shift it. 

As crisply as if there was nothing irregular about this, the king-of-arms said, “I present your champion, my lord.” 

Nico guided Nile’s hand up to a pillow. Her fingers closed around something narrow, but quite heavy. She held it aloft. The applause was no more than was warranted by an uninspiring victory, far from the bombast with which Sir Angharad was known to finish her jousts. 

“Get me out of here,” she said to Nico. He ushered her back to the horse, and Nile put the lists behind her. 

Back where they left Andy, it took both Nico’s hands and his foot braced on Nile’s shoulder to remove the helmet. She tumbled backward when it came off. “My _face_ ,” she said. 

“Your face is fine,” said Andy, upside down in Nile’s vision. In their absence she had fashioned a splint and a sling out of strips torn from Nile’s houppelande. It was always hard to tell with Andy, but she looked satisfied. “Take off the harness before someone passes.” 

Nile sat up and worked at the buckles, though she was distracted by the prize--a peacock feather wrought exquisitely in gold. Nile recognized the utility of gold, if not its aesthetic appeal in coin and ingot form, but this was craftsmanship that elevated its material. 

A knight such as Sir Angharad, or one somewhat richer, would bear that home to her manor house--would lay it on the mantle alongside golden chalices and golden battleaxes and golden miniature chests also filled with gold. 

Nico got fifteen florins pawning it off on the first buyer they met on the road. 

Andy cupped the coins in her left hand and distributed them with her right. Normally during the season, they worked for board until Andy was out of the running, at which point she gave Nile and Nico each a fair cut of the profit to see them through until the next year. This had the added benefit of preventing Nico from embarrassing her by gambling his coin, and subsequently his clothes, away. 

Now though, it was five for Andy, five for Nico, and five for Nile. Enough to get each of them home, well fed along the way. Which meant their roads diverged here. One led to Wales, another Genoa, and the third--Rouen, and the next tournament, in a month’s time. 

Maybe there would be a knight in need of another varlet there, and Nile could keep fed and shod through the season. But her heart rebelled at the idea of following the tournament circuit with anyone but them. 

Nile looked down at the gold in her hand. Her ears still rang from the hit, and her pulse echoed the rhythm of the horse’s gallop. She looked at Nico, and at Andy. “We could keep doing this,” she said. 

“No,” Andy said at once. 

“You did us proud, Nile, but don’t get beyond yourself. You’re a thatcher’s daughter, I’m a smith’s son, and she’s a knight with a broken arm. She’ll send for us when it’s healed.” 

Nico spoke as gently as he ever did, but Nile’s lot was not the same as theirs. He had a trade. Andy had an estate. All Nile had was the fool dreams she carried here on her back, and she had never been so close to seeing them realized. 

She pressed, “The purse in Rouen will be twice as big. With one month, and four coins from each of you, we can outfit and train me.” 

They were both good at being stony when they wished--in fact it was often their resting state--and they each had their fists locked tight around their florins. Nile tried, “Nico, I know the odds are stacked against us.” 

But he was no Saint Jude. He saw right through her, as always, and gave her a cool stare. His loyalty was absolute. 

So Nile turned to Andy. “Do you truly want to spend the rest of the season on your arse?” 

That was the soft center of the target. Andy’s eyes flickered and finally she sighed, and for the second time that day, Nile knew victory. 

* * *

They beat her to hell and back that month, but riding Enfys down the road to Rouen, Nile felt knightly for the first time. She never flinched from the quintain anymore. Her sword calluses were thicker than ever. Her ear missed nothing, and her eye was fixed on the bright horizon. 

“I’m saying,” Nico was saying as he led the pack horse and wagon, “put some by to rent a forge in the city. I’ll work overnight. I thought of a new way to heat the steel--” 

“You never offered to make me new plate,” Andy said. “How long have we known each other, Nico? In fifteen years, you never offered.”

“You always seemed well content with what you had.” 

So consumed was Nile with imagining the sun glinting on clean new steel, that her ear missed the sound of trudging from behind her. Quite suddenly, they were outstripped, and the bright horizon now included a head of curling black hair above a pair of bare brown shoulders, peeling from sunburn. 

“Morning,” said a cheerful voice. A naked man patted the neck of Andy’s horse, and soldiered on. 

Well, that was something they didn’t see every day. Bi-monthly, perhaps, but not daily. “Oi, sir,” Nile called after him. 

This had the intended, but not thought-through, result of causing the man to turn around. Fortunately it was not Nile’s first tournament, so she was able to go on, “Were you robbed?” They didn’t have much to share, and the road made them fittingly distrustful. But if this was the prelude to an ambush, it was the most committed one she ever saw. 

“Thoroughly,” he said, smiling. “I’m too sound a sleeper to travel alone, it seems.” 

“Who are you?” Andy asked. 

“Lady, I am Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani, called al-Tayyib, a poet of some renown, at your service.” When this failed to produce a response from them, he said, “Do any of you ever… read poetry?” 

Nile had no use for it. She looked askance at the others. Andy shook her head. Nico’s gaze was downcast, his jaw locked. 

“Ah,” sighed Yusuf. 

“What set you on this road, master poet?” 

“I came to learn French. Though I seem to hear just as much English, or more, in this part of the country. And you good people are…?” 

After a second Nile remembered it was her job to speak for them now. “Well, I am Sir Angharad de Skenfrith, and these here are my faithful squires, Nicolò di Genova and An--”

She closed her mouth. They had no _nom de guerre_ for Andy. A whole month of preparation and it never occurred to them. Damn and hell. 

“Angnes Freman,” Andy said, with a bland smile that came nowhere near her eyes and melted away in an instant. 

Al-Kaysani’s dark eyes slid from Nile to Andy, and Nile had the creeping sensation that he was reading them, down to the marrow. His smile turned sly in a way that set Nile’s teeth on edge. “Have you a big family, Sir Angharad?” he said lightly, still looking at Andy. 

Nile tried to answer as Andy would, brusque and ceding nothing. “Big enough.” 

“One wonders what the plan might be, were you to meet someone on the road who spent time in Wales, tutoring Sir Angharad’s young nephew.” 

Nico’s head came up at once. “It would be to ensure he could speak no word of this.” 

The shift in al-Kaysani’s demeanor was instant: shoulders loosening, feet turning subtly outward. No slouch. The smile remained, though guarded. “Now that I _do_ believe, squire Nicolò.” 

“Peace,” Nile pleaded, getting down from the horse. “Master poet, our last coin is marked for the entry fee at Rouen. When I have the champion’s purse in hand, we will reward your silence.” 

Yusuf’s mouth twisted as he considered. “And what of the next person who knows your true knight for who she is?” he asked Nile. “Do you mean to bribe your way through the tournament circuit? If you’re in this for the money, you’ll soon be out.” 

He was right. Nile already regretted the wasted month, the use of coin that would have been better spent taking her back to London. She shut her eyes and only opened them when they pointed at the ground, and started to turn and apologize to Andy and Nico. 

But the poet stooped to look her in the eye. He asked Nile, “What if you could be someone else?” 

* * *

He didn’t demand much, the poet. Nico’s spare shirt and trousers fit him, but they had no extra shoes, so he lounged in the wagon. He had found a bit of ochre rock by the roadside and he used it on the boards, sketching out a sort of vertical tourney bracket, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. He waved Nile over, and she brought Enfys alongside the wagon. “Tell me of your Sir Angharad,” he said. 

Nile looked ahead to where Andy walked on foot, because it was easier on her arm than the horse or cart. “She blasphemes perpetually, and is drunk more nights than not. But she’s only ever been kind to me.” 

“How old were you, when you came into her service?” 

“Fifteen.” 

“Old, for an apprentice.” 

“Old for a squire, too.” And a squire she would be at any age, without the bloodline to justify knighthood or the chance to prove herself on the field. “But she took Nico on at the same age, three years before me. He was set aside for the priesthood up until then.” 

“The--” Yusuf caught himself, lowered his voice. “The priesthood? I can’t see it.” 

“Neither could he.” Up where he walked beside the pack horse, Nico’s ears went bright red. “It was that or follow Andy on campaign.” 

Yusuf grunted, and was silent for a while. Eventually he asked, “Where were you born, Nile?” 

“London, in Cheapside. My mother is a thatcher; my father was a soldier. He died at Crécy the year my brother was born.” 

“And you wanted to soldier too?” 

“I wanted to be a knight,” she stressed. “When Andy made her reputation at Poitiers, my mother sought her out every time she came to London, and petitioned her. It took two years, but she never backed down. She was determined that I should change my stars.”

Yusuf glanced up from his diagram and said, “You know, al-Farghānī wrote that even the fixed stars move about us. Whichever ones may have been overhead when you were born, you can choose new ones every night.” It was a romantic notion, and it made Nile smile. Yusuf smiled back and returned to his work. “Now, please explain jousting to one whose only sport is chess.” 

Nile did, in great detail, for the rest of the trip. 

The moment their feet touched the stones of Rouen, the poet was up, sweeping away his ochre and rummaging in the baggage. “What do you have to trade?” 

“Nothing,” said Nico with his lip curled. 

“This?” Yusuf asked, holding up a battered hatchet. He turned to check with Andy. 

Andy shrugged one shoulder. They were, after all, in the city for several days with no need to cut their own firewood. 

“Buy it back with your purse,” Yusuf said as he passed Nile. He walked off, barefoot, toward the market stalls. 

They pitched their pavilion there in the street, taking care to avoid the spots beneath windows, where chamberpots would be emptied in the morning. Nile went with Nico, the crumpled helmet in hand, to beg the use of a forge, but they were at every turn rebuffed. 

The smell of street food went from Nile’s nose directly to her belly, and rattled around in there noisily. “Cat’s meat,” Nico sighed. 

“Hot wine,” Nile lamented. They leaned against each other all the way back to the pavilion, keeping the purse between them so pickpockets couldn’t reach it. They had padded it with sand to supplement their two precious florins. 

Andy left when they reached the tent. Nile watched the light of day fade through the cloth, and tried to sleep instead of being hungry. But presently Yusuf returned. He was washed and shod now, with a fine coat to boot, brown leather trimmed with fur. And he carried--”Jesu, all this for a hatchet?” 

“Oho, no,” Yusuf chuckled as he unloaded cold chicken and bread, a jug of ale, two spare tunics, enough linen for a banner, a stack of parchment and another of vellum, sealing wax, ribbon, a bone needle and green thread, leather, a jar of paste, five goose quills, a small paintbrush and a broad one, three bottles of ink, some charcoal, a little box that turned out to contain colored powders, and one egg. “Gracious, no. The hatchet bought my bath. After that, I found a rusty nail and sold it to a pilgrim--said it was from the Cross.” 

Nico scowled. Yusuf offered him a drumstick. “The farris will lend you the use of her works for the night, squire Nicolò. She said it will be as services rendered, in order to have a hot furnace in the morning.” 

Nile hadn’t thought Yusuf heard that part of their conversation. Nico looked from the poet to the drumstick and back, his eyes softening until at last he took it and ate. Nile dug into a hunk of bread. Yusuf cracked his egg, and separated yolk from white on two pieces of waxed canvas. He set about mixing them into his powders. 

The food and ale was gone by the time Andy returned, wincing as she bent to get through the flap in the pavilion. “Where were you?” Nile said. “You missed supper.” 

“No I didn’t,” Andy replied as she settled on her bedroll, and that was that. 

Nile was nearly ready to let her eyes sag closed when Yusuf passed her a sheet of parchment--her patents of nobility. His calligraphy marched in faultless rows lengthwise across it, with margins left blank for heraldry. 

“Lady Petronella von Lichtenstein of Gelderland?” Nile read. The miraculous dinner had her on the verge of swearing fealty to Yusuf, but this was beyond the pale. “Do I seem Dutch to you?” 

“Anyone can be Dutch, Nile,” said Yusuf, primly taking back the parchment. “And Gelderland is too remote for them to send someone to confirm your patents. Petronella is a good Christian name. Shorten it to Nell for the sake of the crowd’s chants.” 

“ _Bell_ or _Hell_ rhymes with Nell,” Andy mused. 

Nile pursed her lips. It was close enough to her true name that she wouldn’t miss being called that way. 

“Swell,” said Nico. 

“Impel,” said Yusuf. 

“Fell,” said Nile, and at their sharp looks she added, “as in fierce and terrible.” 

Yusuf nodded. “I have traced your lineage back beyond Charlemagne. Your emblem shall be a phoenix, rampant.” 

“Who’s going to stitch that?” Andy asked. 

Nile, Nico, and Yusuf shared a glance. Out of all of them, only Andy had ever sat on a cushion and sewn a fine seam. A long time ago. “You can still use your right arm,” Nile ventured. 

Andy’s eyes flared. “So I will spend the season on my arse, after all.” 

“There,” said Yusuf, giving Andy the linen and tunics, needle and thread. “We all have our work cut out for us.” Nico took his leave then, bound for the farris’s forge. 

“What do I do?” Nile asked. 

“Sleep,” said Andy. “You’ll need your strength.” 

And eventually, lulled by the scratch of quill and the pull of thread, Nile did. 

* * *

In the morning, on horseback and surrounded by the fruits of their industry, Nile hung back a ways from the entry table. She handed down all the money they had to Yusuf. He nodded once, very serious. If anything went wrong now, he had as much skin in this as the rest of them. 

“I’m watching you,” Nico warned him, but there was no rancor in it. 

“Yes, I’ve noticed,” Yusuf said. He strolled to the king-of-arms. “Good morning! It is my great honour to present Sir Petronella, whose mother’s father was Shilhard von Rechberg, son of the Duke Guelph of Saxony, son of Ghibellines, son of Wendish, the fourth Earl of Brunswick, the same Wendish who--” 

“That’ll do, herald. Show me the patents.” 

Yusuf unrolled the leather and parchment, as lavishly illuminated as a book of hours, and held it out as though it were for sale. Which, in a way, it was. The king-of-arms took it and set it aside with the others. 

Relief coursed through Nile like water from a broken dam, and she couldn’t show any of it. True knights weren’t afraid that their patents would be rejected. True knights did this all the time. She made herself sit casually in the saddle as Yusuf placed her in the joust and longsword, and paid the entry fee. 

As soon as Yusuf’s back was turned to the king-of-arms, his face broke into a grin so broad it threatened to spread to Nile. He winked at Nico, who actually twitched half a smile back, so fully were they all caught up in this victory. “You’re number thirty-two in the joust,” said Yusuf, rejoining them. “You face Roger Lord Mortimer in fifteen minutes.” 

Fifteen minutes barely gave her time to put on the new harness, and Nico was still securing Enfys’s barding when the trumpets sounded. “Stall, herald,” Andy ordered, shoving Yusuf forward. 

Nile twisted in the saddle, testing the range of the new armor. Somehow Nico had spun steel into cambric, so thin and light it was. The left pauldron overlapped her breastplate, eliminating the need for a shield and the chance of more accidents like Andy’s. It made her a smaller target, too. 

When Sir Roger’s herald finished his recitation and cleared the lists, Yusuf took his place before the lord’s box. “My lords,” he projected, “my ladies.” He bowed low, and when he rose up, his back was to the box. “And my good people!” 

“What is he doing?” Nile said through her teeth. She couldn’t offend the peerage right out the gate. But for their part, the good people whistled and wheeled their ribbons. 

“It’s fine,” Andy told her, but she wasn’t even watching. Her right hand held Enfys’s bridle and her eyes were on the stands. Nile tried to follow her gaze. There was a herald standing at the end of one row, a falcon ostentatiously on his gloved hand. Beside him, a broad man dressed in black, then a lady all in red, and another in muted shades of blue. 

Yusuf called out, “The knight before you has traveled far to make her tournament debut here at Rouen! She is not of ordinary stock, but I speak of nothing so base as pedigree. No, I speak of deeds, and of the very virtues at the fundament of knighthood. I first made her noble acquaintance--in Italy.” 

“Oh Jesu,” Nico muttered, cinching the last bard. 

“She astonished me there,” Yusuf went on, “by saving a fatherless beauty, whose blush was like the dawn. In Greece, she spent a year in silence, just to better understand the sound… of a whisper.” 

“The hell does that mean,” Andy whispered. Nico stood up at Nile’s right with one clenched fist against the side of her helmet. Nile took it from him and jammed it on her head so none could see her face. 

The crowd was wholly silent now, wholly in Yusuf’s palm. “And on the very road to Rouen, she did stop and give alms to every wretched pauper she met. Indeed, though I have known her only too short a time, she has confirmed to me again and again that yea, verily, the flower of chivalry yet blooms on this earth.” 

He paused to swallow, then continued with his voice pitched confidently once more. “And so it is my pride, my privilege--nay, my pleasure, to introduce you to the Seeker of Serenity, the Protector of Italian Virginity, my lady and now yours, _Sir Petronella von Lichtenstein_!” 

A roar went up. Only from the commoners--the lord and his retinue were too dignified, so they clapped--but it was loud. 

Oh. 

“I feel like I’ve already won,” Nile said when Yusuf stopped before the horse. 

Yusuf kissed Enfys on his cheek. “Keep feeling it until you do,” he told Nile. 

“Why have I never had a herald?” Andy said when Yusuf passed. 

Nile made to tell her she couldn’t afford one, but the flag rose, and they were off. 

Roger Lord Mortimer’s horse shied in the first two passes, and there was no score. But in the third pass, with the crowd whipped to fervor, Nile broke her lance on Sir Roger’s breastplate. 

That felt as good as the cheers from the commoners, but true knights broke thousands of lances before their first tourneys, so again, she could show nothing. Nile only raised her hand to the crowd while she dismounted, instead of throwing her helmet to the ground and dancing a jig around it as she’d prefer. Nico thumped her shoulder when he passed to retrieve Enfys, and Andy put her hand on the back of Nile’s helmet and made sure she could see her smile through the visor. 

Yusuf shouted, “Behold my lady Sir Nell! You cannot touch her! No, you cannot!” He slung his arm over her shoulder and steered her out of the lists. “Mashallah. That was magnificent. Walk fast--you’re due at the sword ring.” 

No time to breathe, then. As the stands dwindled behind them, a cry rose from the people, clear and steady as the chime of church bells on Sunday morning: _Nell. Nell. Nell._

* * *

Nile spent the rest of the morning giving blows and receiving them in the sword ring, at the end of which she was well-ranked in the bracket, and exhausted. For luncheon, she had a nap. Finally she returned where her heart called her, where the glory was, where they knew her name, or at least something like it. To the lists. 

And she got trounced. 

It happened like this: Sir Keane, who had not been defeated in any of their recollection, processed into the lists with fanfare. Black armor, black destrier, black helm carried by a weasely little herald. A Despenser, Andy told her with disdain, and leader of the Free Companies, whose behavior on campaign was of the worst sort. 

As Nile eyed Sir Keane in search of any weakness, Yusuf approached with a woman at his side. Dark hair, blue gown--Nile remembered her from the stands on the noble side of the field. This close, Nile saw that her eyes were hazel, set off by the blue of her gown, and she had a mole on her neck. She carried a red bit of silk. 

“My liege,” Yusuf said, and Nile remembered that was her, and straightened. He indicated the woman. “Celeste.” 

“My lady bids you wear this token,” said Celeste, but then, oddly, she handed the silk to Andy. 

Andy passed the length of it through her hands before offering it to Nile. There was something happening here beneath the surface, something that was not for Nile. But she said, “Of course,” and she took the favor and fixed it to the back of her helmet, where it would trail without risk of damage. “And your lady is…” 

“Lady Quỳnh,” said Celeste. Her accent shaped it into _Queen_. 

“Please tell your lady I will wear this with honour.” 

“Au revoir,” Yusuf said as Celeste turned away. To Nile he added in an undertone, “Focus.” 

“I am focused!” Nile protested. But Yusuf only arched his brows and went to introduce her as the rock and the hard place. 

After the first pass against Sir Keane, she felt like the anvil beneath the hammer. 

Nico led her back to the starting position. “He’s not perfect,” Andy told her, much to the contrary of Nile’s direct experience. “Aims too high on the chest. Roll your shoulder back and his blow may glance to the right.” 

“Unless he strikes me on the left!” 

“Nell. It’s all you’ve got.” 

So be it. In the second pass, Nile rolled her shoulder, and she shattered her lance on Sir Keane’s pauldron. The impact rattled all through her arm, but she felt nothing strike her in exchange. And indeed, when she turned at the limit of the armor’s range to look behind her, his lance was unbroken. 

The crowd began to chant. _Nell. Nell. Nell._

At the starting position she panted, “You were right, Andy.” 

Andy’s voice was steely with pride. “I know it. Finish him off.” 

Sir Keane threw down his unbroken lance, took another from his squire, and came down the lane at a gallop while the page was still lifting the flag. Nile gave Enfys free rein and he did what he did best, soaring to meet Sir Keane. 

The fist-shaped iron coronal tore the helmet off Nile’s head. She saw stars. 

“Whoa! Whoa.” Nico and Yusuf reached her before Nile could fall from the saddle, and sat her up again. Andy arrived a moment later to soothe the horse. 

Nile’s head pounded. The sunlight hurt her eyes but she forced them open anyway, and saw Sir Keane approach with the red silk at the broken end of his lance. She felt sick at losing it, sicker than she felt at losing the match. 

He said, “Gain more bearing, Petronella. See me again when you’re worthy.” 

She could feel the others bristle on her behalf. Nile squinted at one of the three Sir Keanes that rotated gently in her vision, hoping it was the right one. She said, “When I win your horse, I’ll rename him in your honour.” 

Sir Keane had a face that wasn’t made for smiling, and it sat ill on his mouth as he turned away. Over his shoulder he answered, “When I win yours, I’ll have him in a stew.” 

Nico spun on him, and Nile believed he would have vaulted the barrier if Andy didn’t hold him by the collar. 

“Steady,” Yusuf said, easing Nile down from the saddle. “No, don’t look behind. There’s nothing to see but a horse with two asses. He changed his lance for one of beechwood, I’d stake my boots.” 

Andy told her, “You’re not eliminated--you’ll joust the loser of the next match. You can climb back up from this.” 

“Make something from nothing, hmm?” Nico added. “That is what we do.” 

They were speaking as they would to a wounded animal. Yusuf let her put her full weight against him as they walked off the lane. Nile wanted nothing more than to sit alone and cry. 

But she needed to study her next opponent. They found her a bench in the shade, and crowded in so no one could approach. Nico stayed with the horse, as close as they could stand. With her head bent between her knees, Nile would pass for being deep in prayer. “Who’s next?” she asked weakly. 

“Keane defends the field against a Sir Booker.” 

“Do we know him?” Her thoughts wouldn’t keep to an orderly queue. 

“I’ve never heard of him. He’s undefeated after three jousts today.” 

Nile lifted her head as the trumpets sounded. Her skull still rang. There was some commotion over by Keane’s scoring podium, between his herald and squire. The squire sprinted to Keane’s side, and after a moment, the knight nodded. The herald draped a white banner over Keane’s shield. 

“He’s withdrawing?” Andy said. 

He was. The same man who trampled Nile moments ago now saluted Sir Booker with his lance, turned his horse, and rode away. 

“Will someone please explain this to me?” said Yusuf. 

“I’ll see what I can find out.” Andy threaded away through the crowd. 

Nile got to her feet, still unsteady. She only needed to make it as far as the horse. Sir Booker awaited the next match--he had no cause to dismount. 

Nico handed up her helmet. It felt tighter when Nile put it on her aching head. Yusuf waited as Sir Booker’s herald returned to the lists and, awkwardly, introduced him a second time. He was nearly finished with the lineage when Andy returned, breathless. “It’s le Livre. You have to withdraw.” 

“Who?” Nile said. 

“A Valois prince du sang, isn’t he?” Yusuf whispered. 

“I thought he was in exile,” said Nico. 

“He is, and he is, and he’s second cousin to the king. I should have recognized him sooner. Go and drop the flag.” 

“He’s competing under false patents?” Nile said, her brows knitting under the helmet. “Why?” 

“Why do princes do anything?” Nicolò grumbled. “To flaunt that they can break the rules without consequence, and spoil things for everyone else.” 

Yusuf seized Nile’s arm, eyes desperate. “His false patents hide royal blood. Nell, if you knowingly endanger this man, it will be worse than the stocks for you. You _must_ withdraw. There’s no shame in it.” 

Withdraw from the whole tourney. There would be no shame in that for a true knight, but it would be the end for her. They hadn’t the money to enter the next tournament. 

Enfys stamped a hoof impatiently. 

“He just wants to tilt,” Nile muttered, but she nodded to Yusuf. “Give me my introduction, and drop the flag.” 

Yusuf hurried away and bowed before the box. “My lords! My ladies! My good people! Do you know this woman’s name?” 

The chant began at once. She saw some in the lord’s box take it up this time, banging pewter cups against the arms of their chairs. 

“This woman has tasted the cup of victory and the ashes of defeat before your eyes, and borne them both with the same honour and grace! Do you know her name?” 

Grace be hanged. She would see this through. “Nico,” Nile said, “step back.” 

Nico gripped Enfys’s bridle tighter and hissed, “Don’t you dare. You are concussed; don’t you _dare_ \--” 

“You’ll get a fong from each of us before the king’s men get their hands on you,” Andy vowed, pulling Nico away. 

_Nell. Nell. Nell,_ said the crowd. 

“You do know her name!” Yusuf declared. “And so, our work here is done.” 

The instant he cleared the lane, Nile dug in her heels. A hundred meters away, so did le Livre. 

They each broke one lance per pass: a perfect draw. Le Livre’s technique was exemplary, but in an utterly different vein from Keane’s. Keane jousted perfectly to crush people; le Livre jousted perfectly for jousting’s sake. Solid strikes to the pauldron and breastplate, every time, with unfaltering form. He could write a book. 

After the final pass, Nile turned Enfys round, into the glowers of her varlets. At the midpoint of the lists le Livre raised his hand, and then, when Nile reined to a stop, his visor. “Well fought, Sir Petronella.” 

Nile opened her visor and spoke soft enough that only they two could hear. “Et vous, Monsieur le Prince.” 

Le Livre lifted his chin. She saw now how he kept his face angled away from the lord’s box, behind the high guard of his pauldron. “You knew me,” he said cautiously. 

“Aye.” 

“And still you rode?” 

Nile shook her head. “It’s not in me to withdraw.” 

“No,” said le Livre. “Nor me. Though I think I should, before anyone else finds me out. Will you tell Sir Angharad I would see her when you reach London?” 

“Oui,” Nile said, before the implications of that sentence could sink in. They shut their visors, thumped their cuirasses at each other, and rode on. 

Yusuf got the first word in. “You were hit too hard in the head,” he said, arms crossed and face sour. 

“It was a good joust,” Nile told him. “honourably done.” She’d do it again without hesitation, but it behooved her not to say so in the moment. 

Nico had his hands up, opening and closing them the way he got when he was past the point of words. And Andy only stared. 

“Look,” Nile said, pointing to le Livre’s podium. A white banner covered his crest. “He withdraws.” 

“And you advance,” Andy said in a voice as warm as January. 

* * *

She won them back that evening, for Sir Petronella was stood to more free drinks at the inn than one person, or even four, could consume. It was Nico’s idea to march her in, and Yusuf’s to call out, “Behold my lady Sir Nell!” at the door, and the common room grew riotous with acclaim. 

Nile was prepared to content herself with a liquid dinner. Instead, their first round of ale came with roast chicken, dark bread, and fried mushrooms in a savory pudding. The serving girl said it was sent over by Sir Booker, but though they all craned their necks, he was long since gone. 

The food put them in fine spirits, Nile most of all. She hadn’t eaten so richly in a year. 

“Tomorrow,” said Nico, mopping his bread about the pudding, “I think you should make the speeches fancier. Pepper in some Latin.” 

“Squire Nicolò, defender of horses’ honour, I speak five languages and I would choose any of them before Latin, even this vulgar tongue.” 

“Five languages? I suppose you think you’re very special.” Nico and Nile both had a great deal of French thanks to their travels, plus a curated selection of Welsh profanities. Nile spoke enough of Nico’s native dialect to pretend she wasn’t English, if circumstances demanded. They had never encountered a language Andy didn’t speak. 

Yusuf said, “As you are clearly a man of discerning ear, here is what I’ve been working on: _She’s swift. She’s pissed. She’ll see you in the lists--Lichtenstein._ ” 

Nico nodded with the rhythm and lent his voice on the second, drawn-out _Lichtenstein_. “That,” he said, “is too vulgar for the crowd.” 

“I don’t always rhyme,” said Yusuf, smiling into his cup, “but when I do, it’s fit for the pub.” 

“I should withdraw from the sword,” Nile said. 

Andy’s foot caught her ankle. Nico stared at her like she’d sprouted antlers. “It’s your best event!” 

“The prize is bigger for the joust. If I’m to be tournament champion, I’ll have to focus.” 

All three of her varlets sat back from the table and took the measure of her. At last Nico said, far louder than he usually spoke, “I would put you against anyone at this tourney in the sword ring.” 

Three coiffed heads turned toward them at the next table. 

Nile balked. “There are several French champions I haven’t yet faced--” 

“And Englishmen will not win this _French_ tournament,” called a squire, his accent thick. 

“She’s Dutch,” Yusuf called back. 

“Foreign legs are unsteady on French soil.” 

“Parlez-moi?” 

For a moment it seemed they would come to blows, but then one of the squires threw a purse down on their own table, and the sound told Nile they had no need to pad it with sand. “Cinquante,” the squire challenged. 

Nico never took his eyes off Nile, but a sharpness came into them at the sound of coin. “You’re drunk,” Nile accused. 

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“But does it cloud my judgment?” 

Historically and repeatedly, yes. “Is this your revenge, Nico?” 

He smiled, just a little. 

Nile appealed to Andy. “We don’t have fifty florins,” she said, low and urgent. 

Andy took a long drink, eyes steady. After she swallowed she said, “We will when you win.” 

Nile clenched her jaw. For the second time that day, she knew defeat. “So long as you never bet against me,” she relented. 

“The time for that is past,” Yusuf said. 

“Such capacity for cruelty, master poet.” She was still sore from the loss, and she let him see it. 

There was something of an apology in his eyes. “Cruelty would have been to name you Prunella.” 

The rhymes would have been horrifying. “I shall pray never to get on your bad side.” 

“You never could,” he told her. Then he smacked the table and crowed to the French squires, “Cinquante sur le glaive! _Her name, ‘tis Nell! She’s gonna give them hell. She’s gonna give them hell!_ ” 

Despite another excruciating headache in the morning, that is what Nile did. She eliminated all challengers in the sword ring by luncheon, then rode in three of the final six jousts. While she was on bye, she watched the field narrow, and listened to Nico say, “Grazie. Grazie. Grazie mille,” for every coin the French squires dropped into their purse. 

In the last pass of the last match of the tournament, with everyone on their feet, her lance skipped off Sir Lykon’s pauldron and failed to break. It was a clean loss by one point, the work of fate. 

Brokenhearted, Nile kept her head high and accepted the gold figurine they gave her at the presentation--a jouster on horseback. 

Sir Lykon was gracious in victory; he clasped Nile’s forearm and said he looked forward to facing her at Lagny-sur-Marne, before processing out. 

Nile led the others to the pavilion and started to pack. She tossed the golden jouster in with the baggage. A child’s toy. “I’ll not compete in the sword again,” she declared. “If we set out tonight, we can walk most of the way to Lagny-sur-Marne and save the horse.” 

They didn’t answer. She turned and found them sitting idle on the back of the wagon. Nico handed something to Andy, and Nile smelled it from where she stood: tansy cake with peppermint cream. Yusuf already had crumbs in his beard. 

“Is this how you spend the money I won?” 

“My share of it,” Nico said calmly. He handed her a cake too. 

She took it, still frowning. “One of us should be in charge of the purse so we can eat.” 

“What are we doing right now?” Nico protested. 

“Here I thought Andy was the one from Skinflint,” said Yusuf. 

“Skenfrith,” said Andy. 

Nile made herself relax. It wasn’t fair to take the loss out on Nico. And he was right--she deserved to savor this. 

She bit into the cake and found it sweet beyond imagining. Andy made obscene noises over hers and gestured wordlessly at Nico, who smiled as he chewed. 

They all stiffened when Yusuf sprang to his feet. Nile followed his gaze and found Celeste waiting by the pavilion. Yusuf bent his head to speak with her, then returned to them. “Your supper,” he said to Nile, “is paid for.” 

The prospect of a banquet was more terrifying than anything that could happen in the lists. Andy stitched her a tunic from a piece of the pavilion. There was no time to do anything different with her hair, so Yusuf sat behind Nile and wove green ribbons through her braids, which made her feel about seven. “I don’t want this,” she said. 

“You don’t want to eat roast boar with mint jelly and drink wine from a shared cup?” said Nico, holding a bag of oats to Enfys’s muzzle. 

“I don’t want to be _ornamental_. I’m not doing this to honour them. What if there’s a dance?” 

“Make it up,” Yusuf said. 

“I can’t make up steps like you make up deeds. I’ll look a fool.” 

“Nell,” said Nico, “you can see from a fencer’s feet which way the sword will go?” 

“Yes.”

“You feel the change in direction when you’re on Enfys, before he turns?” 

“My dancing partner won’t be between my legs, Nico.” 

A long silence. “Well,” Yusuf said, and she could hear him fighting a smile, “not with that attitude.” 

Andy said firmly, “No, she won’t be.” 

“Why aren’t you doing this?” Nile demanded, whirling on her though it jerked the ribbons. “Why am I courting someone for you, Andy?” 

Andy’s concentration didn’t waver. “I’m not invited, because I didn’t distinguish myself in the lists. I’m just Angnes the varlet.” 

Nile understood that Andy’s anonymity helped their ruse. But if Lady Quỳnh had fallen in love with Andy while believing her to be below her station, Nile would happily correct her. “There’s no reason for you not to be who you are! Plenty of knights have greybeards in their retinue--” 

Nico coughed. Andy’s stare turned the air chilly. Oh, hell. 

“Retired, am I?” Andy said, throwing down her needle. “Then I had best take my horse and go home.” 

“Andy, wait.” Nile put both hands on her good arm, gently, and Andy awaited her with stony face. “What do I need to do?”

Her task was simple: be a shield. She was seated at the banquet table strategically between Keane and Quỳnh. If he wanted to be closer to the lady, he would have had to move to her other side and take Celeste’s place just below the salt. He was far too proud for that, and so by keeping her back angled toward him all through a sumptuous supper, Nile spared Lady Quỳnh the misfortune of his conversation. 

She was resigned to being bored with whatever it was nobles talked about, but Lady Quỳnh had lively opinions on horses and sailing and the longbow, and she and Celeste recounted a performance of Ordo Virtutum they had seen the year before. It seemed hardly a breath passed before supper was already ended. A dance followed; so graceful and natural were the lady’s movements that Nile found it almost effortless to follow her. And Lady Quỳnh had dressed to match her, so they looked very fine as well. 

Andy sat outside the pavilion when Nile returned, late. Her face was illuminated softly in orange every time she drew on her clay pipe. “How was it?” she exhaled. 

Nile untied the red ribbon Quỳnh had put about her wrist when they parted, and presented it to Andy as though it was gold. Andy took it in kind, raising it to her lips. A favor won back. “Well done,” Andy said. 

Finished with the day’s work at last, and feeling every bit of it, Nile pulled her boots off and went inside. Between the entrance and the spot where Yusuf slept soundly, Nico woke at once, but he settled again when he saw it was her. 

Nile lay on her bedroll and sighed, “Tourneys are too short.” 

“How quickly you forget being a squire,” Nico replied. 

* * *

There was no Quỳnh at Lagny-sur-Marne, no Celeste, but there also was no Sir Keane. Nile was disappointed on all counts, though the reasons differed, and some were best left uninterrogated. 

Their wagon snapped its axle on the road from Rouen. Replacing it cost them much of their purse and nearly made her miss the entry deadline, but she was here now. She was here, and thanks to her standing the prior week they placed her first against Sir Lykon, and she was damn well going to win. 

Under the punishing sun with first day nerves, Nile watched Yusuf pace the lists like they were his personal amphitheatre. “My lords, my ladies, my good people. I will not tax you further with another long list of nobility--heaven knows the nobility has taxed you long enough!” 

The response was immediate and deafening, but only from one side of the lists. “Are we here to foment a peasant’s revolt?” Nile asked. 

“It’s a nice day for it,” said Nico. 

“When my lady Sir Nell told me she would apply her skills to the joust,” Yusuf went on, leaning back against the barrier, “I didn’t understand. She tutored me in the rules, and fine tutelage it was, but the truth is--I still don’t. They say there is glory in this sport, but I, good people, can find no glory in hiding such a face as that behind steel.” 

“Give me my helmet,” Nile gritted. Andy didn’t move. There was high good humor on her face. 

“My lady is a gift to your eyes, for we shall never, ever see her like upon this earth again. I do not list her noble ancestors to honour her. I list _her_ to honour _them_. And so without further egging the custard, I give to you: the Sword Champion of Rouen, the Protector of Italian Virginity, my lady and yours, _Sir Petronella von Lichtenstein_!” 

The good people ate it up. The nobles were yet to be won over, though in the box Lord Copley, at least, seemed entertained. 

Sir Lykon’s herald made his introduction, the page raised the flag, and they danced. 

A week without jousting was too long. This was where she belonged, Enfys lunging beneath her as though gravity pulled them forward instead of down, her coronal steadily crossing the midpoint to aim for Sir Lykon’s heart, the anticipation of impact--

Nile opened her eyes, and saw the sky from the flat of her back. 

No. 

No, no, _no_. 

She groaned as Nico skidded to a stop beside her and pulled her up without bothering to check if she broke anything. “Can you breathe?” he asked, pulling her arm across his shoulders. 

No, no, no. 

“That man just ended my whole career,” Nile wheezed. She tried to turn and look behind them, but Nico grabbed her visor and kept her facing front. Facing Andy, who had no color in her face, and no humor now. 

“I lost Andy’s horse. Her _horse_ , Nico.” No, no, no. 

“Shush,” he said. “If you start crying now, you’ll never stop.”

Nile dammed her tears. It was the longest walk back to starting position. “Andy,” Nile said. 

“Have some dignity,” Andy said under her breath, but not to Nile--for now she turned and saw that at the far end of the lists, Enfys was backing up from Sir Lykon’s squires, whipping his bridle away from their outstretched hands. 

Nile wondered how long it would take to run all the way back to London so she could curl up sobbing in her mother’s arms and tell her how sorry she was for wasting this chance. 

Distantly she heard Yusuf and Nico murmuring behind her. 

“The cheapest horse in town is twenty-five, and it’s never tilted.” 

“You were pricing horses?” 

“He isn’t young. How long before it’s the plow for him?” 

They didn’t have the money for a new horse, and it didn’t matter, because Andy would forsake her. 

Sir Lykon dismounted his own charger and went himself to Enfys, who stilled at once, ears forward, and let Sir Lykon soothe him. He took Enfys’s bridle. This was it. 

Sir Lykon jogged down the lists toward them with Enfys in tow. 

“What’s this?” Yusuf whispered. 

“A ransom.” 

“For less than twenty-five, you think?” 

“Not a chance,” Nile said miserably. 

“Heed the fonging customs,” Andy snapped, and they all shut up. 

Nile stepped forward and opened her visor. “My lord Sir Lykon.” 

His smile was bright and easy, because true knights ransomed each other’s horses all the time. A golden favor trailed from his helmet. “My lady Sir Nell. I have unseated you, but I don’t wish our match to end so soon.” 

“Would you ransom my horse, sir?” The lump in Nile’s throat made the words come out weak.

“I would.” His grin broadened, and his voice lowered so the crowd couldn’t hear. “Two pence,” he said. 

Nile felt like she’d been struck again. Yusuf put a purse in her hand, the one supplemented with sand, so as to impress the crowd. With all her dignity, Nile gave it to Sir Lykon. He released Enfys to her, and raised the purse high as he turned away. The crowd cheered. They cheered again when Nile regained the saddle--she was still loved. 

“Let’s not be parted again, me and thee,” said Nile softly to the horse. Enfys tossed his head. 

“I’m like to start rhapsodizing _his_ praises,” said Yusuf, watching Sir Lykon make ready for the next pass. 

“Remember who feeds you.” 

“How could I forget, Nico?” 

“Two pence,” Andy said, insulted. “This horse is worth more than that.” 

_This_ horse was worth the world. Nile spurred him when the flag rose, and together they broke a lance on Sir Lykon’s helmet, and one on his breastplate. That brought her to equal his three points for unhorsing her, and closed the match with a draw. 

Sir Lykon went on to be eliminated by Sir Piers Courtenay, who Nile defeated in the final joust and, in so doing, took the tournament championship. 

It was her first of many. 

* * *

In Venice, Andy’s sighing grew intolerable. Nile had never seen her lovelorn before, and it didn’t suit her. Her arm was nearly healed but her face grew more wan every day, like she would waste away before them. 

Nico was just as miserable to be so close and yet so far from home. “Did we not come here to have a good time?” Yusuf groused late one night, when Nico huffed and turned over one time too many. 

“Master poet,” said Andy, “I should like to commission you.” 

“I’m afraid my rates have risen, commensurate with Sir Nell’s fame.” But Yusuf sat up and lit a candle. “A letter, perhaps?” 

“It has to come from Nell.”

“What? No!” 

“ _You_ wore her favor and _you_ danced with her.” 

“ _I_ hate this game,” Nile warned, but Andy only stared at her, and Nile recalled the sting of losing Enfys and the insult of calling her a greybeard, and she yielded. 

Yusuf prepared a sheet of vellum. Nico sat up and gave him his back for a board. “The letter will come from Sir Nell, but the words must come from you, Andy, else it’s worthless.” 

Andy sighed deeply. Again. “I miss her.” 

“You miss her what? Please cast off the first three things that come to mind, and give me the fourth.” 

Andy furrowed her brow and toyed with the ribbon around her left wrist. 

“You miss her _like_ ,” Yusuf tried. 

“It’s been a month,” Andy groaned. 

“It _has_ been a month,” said Yusuf. He bent to the vellum. “The moon has changed. You have seen all its faces, but not her face, and so your path is in darkness.” 

“Sunsets and sunrises,” Nico offered with his face turned away, “but no warmth in them.” 

“It feels like… many waters lie between us,” said Andy. “I can’t navigate them.” 

Nile said, “The stars reel in the sky, but there’s only one constant enough to guide me. On it I fix my hope of seeing you again. I am as an arrow drawn, waiting to be released toward my target.” 

“She’s not the target,” Andy said. “She is the arrow.” 

Yusuf whistled softly, and wrote. 

“With all the love I possess,” said Andy. Sometimes it seemed her heart was a small target, but Nile had come to understand, especially of late, that she possessed a great deal and gave it freely. 

“Sir Petronella von Lichtenstein,” Yusuf closed, and no one felt the lie of it more sharply than Nile. 

The letter settled the others for now. The candle was soon out and the pavilion filled with snores. 

“Nile?” Nico whispered much later. He always knew when she was sleepless. 

Nile drew a breath. “I sometimes think it would be easier to become a knight on the battlefield,” she whispered back. 

Nico waited before answering so she would know he wasn’t being dismissive. “It isn’t. Be glad of what you have.” 

He was with Andy at Poitiers; he knew. She didn’t want to be one of them that way. 

And the only other way was to lie. 

“I am glad,” she told him, seeking out his hand and pressing it. “Every day.” 

With her winnings in Venice, they bought a palfrey so Nico could deliver the letter. The next tournament, in Prague, was difficult without him. Yusuf hadn’t yet mastered all the workings of Nile’s armor and had to cut his introductions short. (The one time Andy tried to introduce her instead was universally agreed to be a disaster.) He was also prone to drifting in his thoughts now and missing his cues. Nile nearly had to forfeit a match because he didn’t hand up her helmet until she nudged him with her boot. 

But still she won. A golden lance, long as her arm, was presented to her. It felt hollow. The victory itself felt hollow because, once again, there had been no Sir Keane. Andy told her his Free Companies had been called back to the front. Nile could beat every knight in Christendom and it wouldn’t satisfy her. 

Things were set a little more to rights when Nico arrived just after the presentation, singing as he rode up. It was something about many waters not quenching love, and it must have been choral originally, but he put a jaunty rhythm behind it. Yusuf looked on him with eyes shining as if he beheld King Arthur returned. “Well?” said Andy before Nico could even alight from the saddle. 

“Yes, yes. She’ll be in Paris.” 

“And?” said Andy, eyes searching. 

“What token of her lady?” Yusuf pressed. 

Nico’s eyes flickered to him, then Nile, then Andy. “Well… do I give it to Nell, or--”

“Just give me it, Nico!” 

Nico shut his eyes and breathed in to steel himself. Then he leaned forward and kissed Andy’s mouth. It was quite chaste, and afterward he grimaced. 

For her part, Andy stood there a moment longer, eyes wide, then seized Nico and kissed him once on each cheek in the continental fashion. She let him go and stalked away. 

“It _was_ a good letter,” Yusuf said. 

“We should do things by committee more often,” Nile agreed. She eyed Nico, who seemed to have gone away inside himself. He jolted when she prodded his side with the golden lance. “Was there anything for me, Nico?” 

He rolled his eyes and pushed the tip of the trophy away. “Is this supposed to be functional?”

“Not for any purpose I can imagine. See what you can get for it, will you?” 

“Let me,” said Yusuf. “You people don’t understand the art of haggling.” 

He reached for it at the same time Nico did. Nile watched their hands touch, watched them both freeze. She let go of the prize and they still didn’t move. 

Yusuf cleared his throat. “While you were away,” he said, “I composed some new verses.” 

“Did you?” said Nico, a little breathless.

It would be up to her to pack the wagon, then. Nile sighed and left them there. 

* * *

The weather gave the first hints of autumn when they reached Paris. Yusuf declared it was time for a new coat, and then bought one with dagged sleeves just because he could, defeating the purpose. 

Nile’s performance on the first day of the tournament had everyone calling her meteoric. The crowds in Paris loved to believe great jousters appeared fully formed outside the city just in time to stroll in for tourney, and not that they had labored to be there for months. 

She was well placed by the evening and she meant to celebrate, but the others all made excuses. It was dark once she finished putting Enfys up in the stable they could now afford to rent. The chill in the air had driven everyone off the street toward whatever kind of warmth they could find. If no one would drink with her, she could at least get plenty of sleep. 

But on reaching the pavilion, she found it lit from within. A silhouette inside--no, two silhouettes, so entwined that they seemed as one. 

“Andy,” Nile sighed, glad she hadn’t barged in. Where, then, was she to sleep? 

“Hello,” said Celeste, coming out of the shadows. 

“Bonsoir,” Nile answered, feeling suddenly on the back foot, though she couldn’t say why. 

“I am afraid your pavilion will be in use for some time.” Celeste tilted her head. “But I have a room at la maison de l'Estoile, and mulled wine, if you like.” 

Oh. _Oh_. 

“I love mulled wine,” Nile managed. 

Celeste smiled then, dazzlingly, and took Nile’s offered arm. They went together down the deserted street, until abruptly, it was no longer deserted. 

Nile stopped short and hoped Celeste’s constitution could withstand the sight of a nude man. But when she spoke, the lady sounded mostly amused. “Is that your squire?” 

It was. Nico hadn’t seen them. He walked shamelessly bare to all Paris, tossing an apple in the air, and disappeared through a stable door. 

“Excusez-moi,” Nile said, mortified. She made to follow him, and Celeste pursued her.

Nile nearly tore the door off its hinges. “What’s this, Nico? How much will I have to pay the summoner?” 

He startled up from his seat in a stall. “What?” 

“I knew you couldn’t be trusted with the purse! You lost your clothes, even--” But then Nile saw them stacked neatly by a mound of hay and furs. “Oh.” 

“Nell,” Nico said with great care, “as Jesus Christ the Nazarene and his mother the most Holy Virgin Mary are my witnesses, I have not touched knucklebones since before Belgium.” 

“Then _why_ are you out naked?” 

Nico sniffed. “If you must know, he was hungry.” 

“I still am,” Yusuf said, sitting up from under the pile of furs. His hair was quite tousled. 

“Jesu,” Nile muttered, looking away though she’d already seen him naked. 

Unruffled, and maybe even enjoying himself, Nico held out the apple. “You want a bite?” 

Nile shook her head, but Celeste took the apple from his hand and bit deep. Something about the sight filled Nile’s ears with a roar as loud as a thousand cicadas on a summer’s night. Celeste handed the apple back, and Nico tossed it to Yusuf. 

“Goodnight, ladies,” Yusuf said. “May the moon light your way.” 

“It is very full tonight,” said Celeste. 

“And so pale!” 

Nile shook her head despondently. “Nico, I’m sorry. I only pray you can forgive me.” Nico frowned at her. “I’m supposed to be the protector of Italian virginity, and I failed you.” 

Nico went as red as the apple. Celeste turned away with her hand over her mouth. Yusuf lay back, laughing richly. “Leave her her illusions, Nicolò, and come to bed.” 

“I want you to know, I’ll carry this defeat fore--”

“Out,” said Nico, and Nile left, grinning. 

They reached l'Estoile without further incident. Nile stoked the little hearth in Celeste’s room, then sat before it and watched as Celeste’s delicate, uncallused hands prepared the wine. There was but one cup. Celeste offered it first to her, and Nile sipped it, wiped where her lips had touched, and gave it back. 

Celeste drank, watching Nile over the rim. “I have heard,” she said, “your varlets sometimes call you Nile.” 

Damn. _Damn_. “Yes,” she admitted, lowering her gaze. “Sometimes.” 

“I like this name,” said Celeste, and Nile met her eyes again. “I should like to call you it, when we’re alone.” 

Some useless babbling part of her mind began to philosophize about how they weren’t alone, not truly, since they were together, but Nile swallowed that with her next drink and hoped she looked suave. “I would like that as well,” she said. “Is there something I should call you?” 

This was evidently the question Celeste had been waiting for. Her eyes shone like stars. She said, “Yours.” 

Nile tasted wine and cloves and cardamom and a trace of apple, when they kissed. Oh yes. She would wear a blue favor on the morrow, and wear it with more than honour. 

And then Celeste banished all thoughts of tomorrow, or jousting, or anything that wasn’t _now_ and _her,_ from Nile’s mind. 

Until recently, she never had any use for poetry. Now it seemed there was something to all that talk of heavenly bodies. 

* * *

October, and the Thames was shrouded in fog. 

The ferry chain fed one link at a time through the boat’s braces. The same man who had pulled on it the last time Nile crossed the river pulled on it now, but he had fewer fingers. 

Yusuf asked her, “How long since you saw home?” His clear voice was hushed, as if the mist demanded it. The others huddled, quiet, on the floor of the ferry. Even Enfys could have been a statue but for the flick of his tail. 

“Twelve years,” said Nile. 

“Since the last time, I mean.” 

Nile said, “I haven’t come back,” and Andy and Nico both lifted their heads to stare at her. Nile looked down between her feet. “I made a vow when I left, not to return until I was a knight.” 

She felt all of them staring now, including the ferryman. 

“Jesu, Nell,” said Nico. “What did you do in the off season?”

She shrugged. “This and that. I took up with a mummer’s troupe one year--that was entertaining.” 

“I wish you’d said something,” Andy said. 

For what? So Andy could bring her to her estate? Nile only shook her head. 

Yusuf cleared his throat. “Well, now here you are,” he prompted. Nile looked up and saw the mist part. The glow of dawn sat over London’s spires. 

“Here I am,” she echoed. 

They paraded in the morning, over the bridge and through the city streets. Yusuf walked before her with Sir Nell’s crest, Nico and Andy behind with her banner and a lance. The king-of-arms had handed her patents back to Yusuf at the entry table, so unimpeachable was her reputation. 

Nile’s good mood was only dampened a little by the arrival of a proud black destrier on her right. 

“Sir Keane,” she greeted. “And here I thought placement at the championship required participation at prior tourneys. Seems there’s no justice after all.” 

“If there were justice,” Sir Keane said, “I would see you all in the stocks. Your herald for his dangerous ideas, your varlets for countless disgraces on the field--and you.” 

“For what, sir knight?” 

Keane smiled grimly and held his silence. 

He knew Andy and Nico, then. If he had anything on her, it was worth seeing whether he could be reasoned with. “My herald,” Nile pronounced, “has recently bought a hatchet. I wonder if you and I could bury it.” 

“No sir, we can’t.” He spurred his horse ahead and away. 

Very well. 

When Keane was gone, Yusuf said, “You never finished explaining jousting to me, Sir Nell.” 

“You know the rules better than the king-of-arms now.” 

They entered the tiltyard, where they would stand still for what seemed like an age so the crowd could get their eyefull. 

“Not the rules, the why. I know you’re not mad for gold, and I don’t think you care to be worshiped.” Yusuf lifted his chin toward the lord’s box, where many ladies beamed at them, Celeste and Quỳnh among them. 

“Only in private,” Nile said quietly, smiling back at Celeste. 

“Nell,” gasped Nico. “That’s blasphemy.” But he was smiling too as he said it. 

“It can’t be described,” Andy told Yusuf. “It has to be felt.” 

“Everything can be described. All human activity lies within the artist’s scope.” 

Nile was no artist. She said, “If I had land, I’d build my own lists and tilt against Nico all day.” 

No patents, no parades, no pretending. Nothing but the horse and the plate, the lance and the skill. The joy of it. 

Yusuf smiled up at her. “I’m afraid I can’t spare Nico all day.” 

“Half the day, then, and Andy the other half.” 

“I’m too old for that,” said Andy. “Resign yourself to the pageantry. It’s the price we pay.” 

But Nile knew this was the last time she would pay it. 

She and Sir Keane were placed at opposite ends of the bracket. Nile had faced everyone in between--had beaten everyone in between. During her byes, she watched only Sir Keane’s jousts. 

It was Sir Keane against Sir Lykon on the afternoon of the first day. Keane’s loathsome herald recited his lineage to a crowd that was drowsy from luncheon. Nile leaned against the rail of the stands and asked Andy, “How would you beat him?” 

“With a stick, while he slept.” Nile gave her a look, but Andy just shrugged. She could do it with both shoulders now--she’d be fit to joust again soon. “He has no weakness. Aim dead center, and hold on.” 

That was Sir Lykon’s strategy too, it seemed, and the first pass saw them both break a lance. 

The second pass went terribly wrong. 

Sir Lykon cried out when he was struck. Nile had chosen a vantage point that would show her Keane’s approach, so she didn’t see Lykon pull the broken piece of lance out of his breastplate. Only when he turned, dazed, did she see that a hole had been punched through the steel. 

“Motherfucker,” Andy said. 

Nile’s fingernails dug into the railing. “Keane tipped his lance,” she breathed. She saw no point on the broken piece, which meant it had snapped off in Sir Lykon’s chest. And in the second pass--he wasn’t even given the chance to finish. 

“That’s a foul!” Yusuf shouted toward the line judges, but they were accustomed to hecklers and paid him no heed. 

“That’s murder,” Nico said, very low. 

Sir Lykon kept his saddle all the way back to the starting position, and there his herald went to fetch a surgeon. Injuries in the lists were common enough that the king-of-arms did not delay the day’s schedule for them. He called the match for Sir Keane, and the knight slunk away without waiting to be accused. 

Nile turned her back on the yard. Andy’s lips were pressed tight together. Nico stared fiercely at nothing. 

Yusuf met Nile’s gaze. He spoke softly, but his voice carried the iron promise of a reprisal that Nile was eager to dispense personally: “He shouldn’t have done that.” 

* * *

Nile knelt beside Nico in St. Paul’s, crossed herself, and prayed for Sir Lykon’s recovery. She stayed there until her feet grew numb. It suited her emotional state. 

Out on the steps, Nico said he was going to get lunch, and Nile waved him on and turned toward Cheapside. 

She was hungry, but she saw no point in eating. It was the second day--the last day--and there was only one joust left that afternoon. The one she’d waited for all season long. 

The same alley was still there, with the same crooked wagon ruts where she and Jay and Dizzy used to gallop their stick horses and thrust their old table legs at each other. Other little girls with ribbons in their hair played there now. As Nile passed by, one of them declared herself Sir Nell, the Seeker of Serenity. 

The same two old buildings leaned together like horses sent to plow, and at their junction was a roof distinguished by the freshness of its thatch. The windows underneath it stood unshuttered to admit what passed for fresh air in London. 

Nile stood in a doorway across the street, and looked up at the windows for as long as she could afford to tarry. 

She wouldn’t go in. Not until she was a true knight, or the trumpets sounded on Judgment Day--whichever came first. She found some serenity standing outside, though. The bells of St. Paul’s tolled the hour, and Nile left to prepare. 

Their stable was empty except for Enfys. She gave him a handful of oats. “Do you have one more in you, old chops?” she asked. He snorted. “Aye. Me too.” 

She put on his barding herself, and had just pulled on her gambeson when Nico and Yusuf burst in. “About time,” she said. 

“Nile,” said Nico, and Nile looked up. There was no color in his face. “Someone followed you in Cheapside. She was asking questions. I couldn’t get to her before she went to the king-of-arms.”

“They asked me for your patents,” Yusuf said in an unsteady voice. 

Nile took a breath, let it out. “Well, they can arrest me after I beat Sir Keane.” Yusuf and Nico exchanged a baffled look. “My plate, Nico,” Nile said. She couldn’t put it on by herself. 

With obvious effort, Nico unclenched his fists and spoke very calmly. “They will not give you your last match, Nile. You have to run.”

“ _We_ don’t run.” 

“Today we do!” 

Nile finished buckling her gambeson. “Do you remember what you told me in Flanders?”

Nico’s brows knit. “No?”

“I haven’t gotten beyond myself,” Nile said, “not once in all this time. And I don’t have any illusions. This was never going to last more than one season--either I’d be eliminated, or exposed. For good or ill, this is my last joust, and I’m going to use it to beat him, and make sure he knows it was a thatcher’s daughter who did it.” 

“He isn’t worth it,” Nico pleaded. “You are wasting your gift.” 

And where would she be able to use it, if she ran? “It is _my_ gift, Nico, and I’ll do what I wish with it. I am here to compete.” 

“Damn your pride,” Yusuf spat. “They’ll come any minute to put you in the stocks.” 

She was suddenly furious with him. “You, master poet, have no business goading me to cowardice when it’s your lies they’re finding out. You sold me to the crowds these months like I was a rusty nail.” 

Yusuf gripped her shoulders. Tears stood in his eyes. “You are gold to us, Nile. That’s why you have to run.” 

Nile set her jaw. “I won’t. But you should, before you’re found with me.” 

Nico scrubbed at his face. He went to their wagon and pulled out the longsword in its sheath. It was blunted for tourney use and would only serve to get him killed. He took up position by the stable door, rolling his shoulders. 

Yusuf let go of Nile and looked sorrowfully on her a moment longer. Then, from the baggage, he removed the hatchet and a knife. 

“Who’s going to put on my plate?” Nile asked. 

“ _Stop_ playing the knight,” Nico snapped at her. 

The stable door opened and they all made ready, but the man who stood there was not who Nile expected. 

The exiled prince le Livre drew up short at the sight of so many blades. He lifted his hands slowly; one of them held a roll of leather. 

“Peace,” said Andy, stepping around him. She looked splendid with a green velvet capelet over her shoulder. It seemed she, too, had given up the ruse. Nico and Yusuf relaxed somewhat. 

“I just came to deliver this,” said le Livre, holding the roll out to Yusuf, “and to wish you luck in the joust.” 

“Merci, Monsieur le Prince,” Nile said, and only then did Yusuf put his knife away and accept what was offered. Le Livre dipped his head and took his leave. 

Nico shut the door behind him. At Andy’s questioning look, he said, “They know, Andy. Please, tell her we have to go.” Andy put her hand on his shoulder. 

Yusuf opened the roll. Ribbons unfolded from inside it, with wax seals dangling. He peered at it, then glanced to Nile, then Andy. “Oh, these are very good.” 

“Certain information was only available in the royal archives,” Andy told him. 

“I’ll bet it was.” Yusuf’s smile was sly once more. 

Nile crossed to look. Heraldry paraded in the parchment’s margins; it drew her eye first, before the words. He had used accents of gold leaf and ultramarine. These surrounded familiar names with unfamiliar titles, going back six generations on either side. 

“He kept the phoenix emblem,” Yusuf said, watching Nile’s face. “Sir Nell’s end is your beginning.” 

“And I don’t have to sew anymore,” said Andy. 

Nile read aloud, “ _The Honourable Nile Freman, born to Theophania, Baronetess Freman of Cheapside_ \--” She looked up, frowning. “He mocks me.” 

“Not so,” said Andy. “It’s backed by the crown. There’s been a decree, and the king-of-arms was informed of the clerical error.” She reached over and closed Nico’s mouth for him. 

“Then I shall go and re-enter you,” said Yusuf. 

“Hold,” Andy said, and Yusuf did. She turned to Nile. “When your mother first petitioned me--” 

“You didn’t want another squire,” Nile finished for her. 

Andy raised a brow and looked back at Nico before facing her again. “I did,” she said. “It took two years, Nile, for me to make arrangements that ensured I wouldn’t be called back to the front.” 

Nile furrowed her brow. Withdrawing from the war meant fewer opportunities for Andy to increase her holdings, much less her renown. It meant her squires would not have the chance to be knighted for valour on the field. It meant that they had scraped on the tourney circuit for twelve years. 

Andy chased her gaze. “I made her the only promise I could: I’d see that you had a chance to… feel what it was like. The glory, without the rest of it.” She swallowed, licked her lips. “Besides, battlefield knighthoods don’t happen much anymore. They’ve run out of land to give away.” 

“I don’t understand,” Nile said weakly. 

Andy nodded toward the patents. “It just means these won’t change much for you. But they’ll keep you jousting.” 

“Andy,” Nile whispered. “I don’t know how to thank you.” 

“Return my horse,” Andy said. 

“Wait until tomorrow,” Nile told her. 

Andy smiled. The dam broke, and tears ran down Nile’s cheeks. 

Andy held out her hand. Nico always knew when she wanted her sword, and he placed it there now. “Take a knee,” said Andy, and Nile did. “This is past due and well deserved.” 

Nile kept her head bent as if at prayer, and the tourney sword lit on her right shoulder, then her left, as gentle as a bird on a branch. “Arise, Sir Nile.” 

She rose. 

* * *

The sky was so clear Nile thought she might see stars in the day if she looked long enough, but she lowered her eyes to more pressing matters. Pennants and ornamental shields swaying in the breeze. Grandstands, filled to bursting with humanity. The lord’s box, where sat the ladies Quỳnh and Celeste, and between them, the Baronetess Freman of Cheapside and her honourable son. Benches at ground level, bearing the day’s eliminated jousters with their many aches. 

Her herald stood by one of these, speaking with a bandaged knight. When the trumpets sounded, Yusuf jogged back to Nile’s side. “He will live to tilt again,” he reported. “He asks that you raise a flag for him.” 

Nile saluted toward Sir Lykon, and he waved to her. There were seven places for scoring flags at each podium. Nile intended to raise one for each of them. 

Sir Keane’s squire had been practicing. His voice carried in the arena; he said a few things that got pitying smirks from the ladies, and he even attempted to rhyme. 

“If I raise myself in the stirrups,” Nile said, cheeks aching from smiling, “I might get a better angle on him. Maybe an earlier strike.” 

“Or his strike will send you over the cantle,” Nico replied. True enough, it was a gamble. 

“No one’s ever done that before,” said Andy, but Nile could tell she was thinking about it. 

“No one’s ever had armor this light before.” 

Yusuf said, “Is this the time to be trying new things?” 

“Everything’s new today, Yusuf,” Nile said. But Keane’s herald finished, and they put aside the discussion. In any case, they all should have expected Nile to go and do it anyway. 

Yusuf had his own grand reputation now. When he took his place before the box there was respectable applause. A larger audience, to be sure, than any poet ever saw in London. 

“My lords! My ladies! My good people! You have come to see the very finest of your sport, and I have come to show her to you! Those who enter the tiltyard must deliver proof of noble birth. But this is a contradiction, for I submit to you that _nobility_ is proven in the lists. And she has proven hers at Rouen, at Lagny-sur-Marne, at Bordeaux, at Venice, at Prague, at Paris, and now here in London!”

He let the applause swell and fade again. “This is a woman who jousts like she invented the sport, and conducts herself in and out of the lists as if she invented chivalry.” 

If looks could eviscerate, the one he adopted now before aiming it at the other end of the lists would have gutted Sir Keane. “For it’s true that there are some knights who see jousting as a way to keep limber for the battlefield, and who use their martial skill to pillage and devastate.” 

He turned his back on Sir Keane. “But all she has ever wanted is the opportunity to try herself. To compete for your acclaim. And I can imagine no nobler goal.” 

_Nell. Nell. Nell,_ said the crowd. 

“No, no, no,” said Yusuf, raising a finger, and they quieted. “Alas, good people, we have mispronounced her name all this time. Though it’s too late to rewrite the brackets, I hope you will join me in amending this much. For she is one of yours, from Cheapside just beyond these stands. Born to a thatcher, and a soldier who fell at Crécy. Twelve years a squire, six times a champion, and only now has she returned to do her lady mother proud. Will you welcome her home?” 

A cheer went up, though they knew not what name to say. Nico handed her her helmet, but Nile kept it off a little longer. 

“If it is possible to introduce you to someone who is no stranger, then it is my great honour to do so. I present to you our lady, _Sir Nile Freman_!” 

It had a different cadence, her name, when the crowd chanted it back to her. It didn’t toll. It galloped. 

Nile listened with her hand aloft to them until the page brought out the flag. Then she donned her helmet and lifted her lance. The flag went up, and Enfys charged. 

With her weight full in the stirrups, suspended over Enfys and not on him, the lance rode smoother and couched easier. It sat just a hair higher, braced and steady. It shattered spectacularly on Sir Keane’s helmet. 

“I’m sold,” said Andy when Nile returned to their end. “Do it again.” 

Nile did. On the ride back after the second pass she held her head just so, and through her visor she saw only green ribbons waving from the stands. To one side were four scoring flags; to the other, two. She hadn’t even felt his strikes. 

She expected that Keane wouldn’t risk disqualification by attempting to repeat what he did to Sir Lykon, but as she stood with the others, Nile watched him select a different lance. He was too incensed to care anymore. “That one will be tipped,” Nico said. 

“That one will be oak,” Yusuf added. 

“Then I’ll see that I don’t get hit,” said Nile. 

She stayed seated for the third pass, and rode with everything she had. She took the lance to her pauldron and saw the false coronal shatter there, but the iron tip beneath it slid away over her shoulder. Nile’s lance was already driven home in the middle of Sir Keane’s chest. It broke there, and he toppled. 

If Yusuf had anything to proclaim now, he could not be heard for the crowd. 

Nile let Enfys run a full round of the yard, discarding her helmet as they went. She only reined up when they reached Nico, who held the bridle of the great black destrier with the empty saddle. The horse stood placid, ears forward despite the clamor from the stands. 

“How lovely,” Nile said, dismounting. Here was a finer prize than anything they could give her at the presentation. She chafed the horse’s neck beneath his barding. “You deserve a better name than Keane.” 

“Pietro?” Nico said. 

“Pietro!” Nile said, delighted. “The rock and the hard place.” 

She was nearly bowled over then by Yusuf, who abandoned words in favor of kissing the top of Nile’s head, then turned and kissed Nico. 

People streamed out of the lord’s box, and any moment there would be a mad crush of all of them--Lady Quỳnh, Nile’s mother, her brother, Celeste. Nile couldn’t wait, but she had to do this first. 

She left Nico and Yusuf there and led Enfys, as she had done for twelve years, to where Andy stood with great dignity at the end of the lists. “Sir Angharad,” Nile said, “I thank you for the lend of your horse.” 

Andy accepted Enfys’s bridle, smiling. “And I look forward to tilting against you next season,” she said. 

“That _will_ be a match.” Several, Nile hoped. 

“I’m taking Nico back,” Andy added. 

Nile glanced behind, and hoped Andy didn’t intend to take him back too soon. He and Yusuf were still quite lost in each other. 

Perhaps now that Nile had made her reputation, she would be petitioned by a mother in Cheapside, on behalf of a girl who had outgrown her wooden horse. If they started soon enough, Nile could have her ready to squire for the next season. 

“I suppose I’ll have to pay the going rate for his smithing now,” she said, turning back to Andy. 

Andy glanced skyward, considering. “I have land, you know. With some of your winnings, you could build him a forge.” 

Nile blinked at her. “And a tiltyard?” 

“And a tiltyard,” said Andy, smiling softly. 

One where anyone would be permitted to joust, so long as they had the spirit. “Fine,” Nile said. “But you can’t have my herald.” 

Andy’s eyes narrowed. “Then we’ll have to go on sharing a pavilion, if for no other reason than to escape them.” 

Nile grinned at her. What, after all, had changed? 

Only everything. 

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers for reading! I'm @hauntedfalcon on Tumblr if you want to come yell with me about _The Old Guard_ or _A Knight's Tale_ or both.


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